BWW Reviews: BALANCHINE AND THE LOST MUSE: REVOLUTION AND THE MAKING OF A CHOREOGRAPHER by ELIZABETH KENDALL

George Balanchine (1904-1983) is considered the greatest choreographer of the 20th century, his transforming genius in dance often compared to that of Mozart and Stravinsky in music and Picasso and Cezanne in art. Born Georgi Balanchivadze in Czarist Russia, he fled the country of his birth for the West in 1924. After working with Diaghilev's fabled Ballets Russes, he came to the United States in 1933, and with Lincoln Kirstein founded the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. Through his many works Balanchine crafted an American style of neoclassical ballet that changed the world of dance.

Much has been written about Balanchine's life after 1924, but his childhood and young adulthood have not been the subject of intense study. Were there pivotal events and friendships during this period that would reverberate in later years, influencing his life's work?

In her just published book, BALANCHINE AND THE LOST MUSE: REVOLUTION AND THE MAKING OF A CHOREOGRAPHER (published by Oxford University Press in a hardcover edition; $35.00; 288 pages; 30 black and white photos; 1 map), literature professor and dance critic Elizabeth Kendall examines and answers that question. She brings to light little known details of Balanchine's time in Russia, illuminating this decisive period in the life of the man who would become the most influential of ballet choreographers. Based on extensive original research in Russia, Georgia, Finland, France, and the United States, the book is part biography and part cultural history of pre-and post-Revolutionary Russia, a period of transition and chaos, but also of creativity and experimentation in the arts. Kendall offers new insights into Balanchine's formative years, revealing more about his life during this period than any previous book.

The "muse" in the book's title is Lidia (Lidochka) Ivanova (1903-1924), classmate and close friend of Balanchine, a bold and talented dancer who was close to the ruling Bolshevik elite. She should have gone with Balanchine when he escaped to the West in 1924, but didn't because she drowned on the eve of their departure, possibly a murder victim; her body was never found. Her name has appeared in biographies of Balanchine, but without much details or photos. Kendall gives us the first book-length study of the relationship between Balanchine and Ivanov, providing a biography of her short, but extraordinary life and her tragic death at the age of twenty.

About Author

Trudy Garfunkel is the author of five books, including three on dance: ON WINGS OF JOY: THE STORY OF BALLET FROM THE 16th CENTURY TO TODAY (hardcover edition published by Little, Brown; Paperback edition published by EReads); LETTER TO THE WORLD: THE LIFE AND DANCES OF MARTHA GRAHAM (Little, Brown): and LET���S EXPLORE BALLET (Running Press). Her articles on dance and the arts have appeared in the Playbill of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, New York City Ballet���s Repertory Notes, and the Oxford Companion to United States History, in addition to www.broadwayworlddance.com. As an arts education consultant, she has written a number of student and teacher guides to classical, modern, and ethnic dance, and theater for several performing arts centers in the tri-state area. For many years she was a publicity and book publishing executive and worked on a number of dance related projects, including the 6-volume Encyclopedia of Dance and Repertory in Review.